Modularity is the Message
Review of Sacai Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
New From the Familiar, Wrapped Up, An Embrace of Fabric
At a time when we are being challenged to shop our wardrobes or re-style what we own, Chitose Abe read the room. Having always been a creative plugged into the art of tailored transformation, this season modularity was in perpetual motion on her fall runway.
A more subdued collection than we are used to seeing from Sacai, a tight palette of utility darks made the collection feel as if it could have benefitted from an edit of some styles which were doing a similar job, but across the collection there were the designers strong ideas around a wardrobe that fits the daily life of the woman she is designing for. So there was tailoring deconstructed and wrapped around the body cape-like, a duvet-style puffer coat which looked to be made from a number of zip-off and wrapped elements (wrapping was a key gesture for creating multiple ways to style garments this season), which are a key consideration owing to the changeable climate which calls for adaptability throughout the day, let alone the seasons, and oversized paillettes on pant hems and knitted tops offering up alternative ideas for day or night styling.
Taking inspiration from the earlier menswear collection that was influenced by the children’s book ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak her shearling trimmed leather outerwear was a highlight in its beast-like adjacency that also employed an innovative knit-fringe technique which resembled fur. In the absence of the storybook characters from the men’s show, for this collection the surrealist photography of Man Ray was used to create a ‘Photo-stitch’ embroidery that was not simply included for graphic impact, but purposefully focussed in on the lips and the eyes, as according to todays show notes they are “the purest essence of sensual beauty”.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
The Sacai show notes highlighted that for Abe “..the silhouette [is] always at the heart of her work” and in today’s collection which focussed on cocooning the wearer through various ways of wrapping the garment around the body, the designer wasn’t simply creating familiar silhouettes formed into “a cocoon of fabric”, but she was also providing a creative way for women to protect themselves from both the elements and the outside world.
